Operation Sugar-Daddy

[Derek Neighbors]

As a long time user of GNUCash...


David J Patrick wrote:
> While I feel that gnuCash is the state-of-the-art personal finance
> package, for linux, I understand that not everyone (including myself) is
> entirely happy it. I also understand the frustrations that that (heroic)
> core development team must be experiencing; a LOT of work has gone into
> it, and continues to go into it. gnuCash is constantly compared to
> proprietary Winders applications that had a huge head start, are
> designed for vendor lock-in, and have thousands of times more
> development resources ($$$). The development team is also suffering from
> inadequacies of underlying software technologies, beyond their control.
> And STILL they soldier on, incrementally improving this labour of love.

Certainly it is unfair to compare feature to feature GNUCash against
Quicken/Quickbooks/Peachtree etc... As clearly they have been around
longer and have much larger resource pools.  However, the end consumer
doesn't give a crap about that.  They just want what they need.  They
could care less who gets more resources and what is "fair". ;)

> That said, personal / business management software is arguably THE
> gateway application, for linux. For the majority of Windoze users (and
> that is the majority of computer users) money management is the most
> important use of their computer. Without an easy to use, easy to install
> financial app, that equals the usability and feature set found in
> M$Money and Quicken/QuickBooks, there is NO WAY they will (or should)
> switch to linux. For everything else (browsing, email, IM, music,
> graphics) there are applications that equal or better the proprietary
> counterparts. gnuCash is so close we can taste it, but to expect the
> core dev team to bring it the rest of the way, for free, in their spare
> time, just because it's important, is unreasonable.

It holds some people back.  I don't think it is "the gateway"
application however.  It certainly is important though.

> The lack of a mature, feature rich, financial app is THE barrier to
> widespread linux adoption. I think the huge companies sinking billions
> into linux would recognize that fact, and gnuCashs success would be
> their success. Conversely, gnuCashs failure would negatively affect all
> those with a vested interest in open source software. If this case were
> properly presented to the right people in the companies at the crest of
> the linux wave, I'm sure that we could find a long term sponsor. Let's
> put together the documents (where gC is now, where it needs to go, what
> resources would be required, what benefits to the sponsor, what
> limitations, timelines etc.) and make a list of potential candidate
> companies, find the appropriate contacts, make the proposal and FIND A
> SUGAR-DADDY !!

You must clarify barrier to "whom".  As for individual users I don't
think it is the "sole" barrier.  To large corporations it certainly
isn't the barrier as SAP, Peoplesoft and Oracle financials all run on
Linux.  To small companies yes I think it is a large barrier.

Many of you may or may not remember that GNUCash DID have a sugar daddy
(albiet a screwed up one) once upon a time.  Back in 2000 a venture
capital company called Linux Global Partners (LGP) that sunk money into
Ximian and other Free Software houses put up money for GNUmatic a
company designed specifically to develop GNUCash.  They had several
programmers on staff and employed the maintainter of GNUCash.  GNUMatic
has since gone the way of the dinosaur.

One problem is there was not a sustainable business model around the
product.  Shrink wrap sales of GNUCash is not highly viable and
offerring support doesn't really bring in the cash to maintain new
developments.

>From a perspective of someone that can code and uses GNUCash some
problems are that it's technology choices are not the kind that attract
developers.  Working with C and Scheme to do trivial functionality is
just not how most hackers want to spend their time on an end user
application.

Add to that the amount of gnome 1.4 cruft that needs cleaning and it
takes a real love for GNUcash to spend time in the code.  Just lurking
on the list as of late, I think the developers are right in saying wait
for the gnome 2 port.  I think will bring some new excitement and update
some old code in gnucash to something more appealing for new developers
to jump into.

-Derek

> djp
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